Wise Words

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." - Morpheus, The Sandman - Dream Country (Neil Gaiman)

"A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensly right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt." - Mark Twain

"At the beginning there was the Word - at the end just the Cliche." - Stanislaw J Lec

Monthly Archives: August 2008

So we reach the end of Volume 6 of A ‘Verse Full of Scum. There’s only four more episodes and an epilogue to go, which will be posted over the next four weeks. I’ll post the final episode and the epilogue together.

I really hope you’ve enjoyed it so far and go on to enjoy it till the end. I’ve had quite a few emails about it and they’ve been overwhelmingly positive so far. Thanks very much to those that have taken the time to write to me. It’s always good to hear from you, so leave comments or send emails whenever you like.

In today’s episode Ghost discovers that others are closing in on him and Gans. Head on over to the Serial Novella page as usual to catch up.

A friend of mine (and quality writer) has put together an anthology of short fiction called Speculative Realms. It’s a collection of short stories from authors all over the world, all following the theme: Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

The stories were all chosen through a fairly rigourous selection procedure, so this book should contain some pretty good new fiction. And I’m not involved, so it’s not shameless self-promotion going on here either. (They didn’t accept my submission!)

There’s going to be an online book launch running a full 24 hours on September 1st and there’s a promotional video on YouTube that you can have a look at to learn more about the book. If it strikes you as interesting then give it a go and help to support independent publishing and emerging writers.

A little late in the day, but still just about on schedule. You’ll find Episode 29 of A ‘Verse Full of Scum on the Serial Novella page now. In this episode, Ghost learns a little more about his role as described in the Sanctuary’s holy book and discovers that he’s rather more involved than they originally let on.

We really do live in the generation of people that can’t remember what they had for breakfast. Call me a crotchetty old bastard (go on, I don’t care), but it seems like people really have no memory for the greats and classics any more.

Take this as an example. It’s a fairly safe bet that Yahoo! users are largely Gen-Y and younger. It’s fair enough to assume that people of that age would be the most likely to fill in a Yahoo! poll. They would certainly make up the majority in any case, thereby skewing the results. So, when Yahoo (I refuse to type it with an exclamation mark any more) wanted a list of the top 30 science fiction movies of all time, we should have known not to expect much.

I mean, seriously. Ironman the number one science fiction movie of all time? Did these people take too much Ritalin that day?

There’s some hope with a classic like The Day The Earth Stood Still on there, but that’s the oldest film on the list. There are also some genuinely awesome movies listed – Serenity, Star Wars, Alien and so on – but it’s largely a pop candy list. And where are the real classics? Where’s Blade Runner, the greatest movie of all time? Where’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie that redefined the genre?

However, if we take the time to look a little closer, there is some hope. My optimism always struggles to get through. The original Star Wars movies are, quite rightly, ranked very highly and only one of the truly awful prequels made the list. Otherwise, the original movies on the list largely rank lower than their sequels, which is a real shame. Aliens should never beat Alien, T2 should never beat Terminator. But, at least those originals are on there and not just the sequels. Still, there you go. That’s what happens when you let kids loose on the internet. Bah, humbug, grumble.

However, along with seeing Star Wars rank justifiably high in that terrible top 30, S F Signal is asking the question, Is This the End of George Lucas’s Reign of Terror? It would seem that the latest installment in the Star Wars merchandise advertising series, The Clone Wars, had a pretty shocking opening weekend. It took only US$14,611,273. Only fourteen million dollars is a truly bizarre thing to say, but in Hollywood terms that’s cheese money. It’s the lowest opening weekend for any Star Wars movie yet. So, perhaps there’s hope for all those Gen-Yers after all.

And the critics have been no kinder:

“George Lucas is turning into the enemy of fun.” – Entertainment Weekly

“…a mechanical attempt to milk the kids for every last dime.” – Chicago Reader

This is something that has me seriously concerned. Alan Moore’s awesome graphic novel Watchmen is still one of the most influential graphic novels ever written. It set the stage for what can be achieved by the collaboration of great writers and artists. It proved that comic books didn’t have to be Wham! Holy catsuits, Batman! and Archie. It’s the only graphic novel to ever be included in a Time list of 100 best English-language novels (2005). The powers that be there have since changed the rules so that a graphic novel can’t be selected again. Elistist bastards.

Anyway, it’s a bloody good book basically. Now they’re making it into a movie. This is a project that has tried to get off the ground numerous times, but keeps falling over. Alan Moore has distanced himself from the project, as he does with all movies made of his work. However, it’s now up and running.

Directed by Zack Snyder (of Dawn of the Dead and 300 fame) it’s finally crossed the line and is scheduled for a 2009 release. The scope of the story is massive and I really think it will struggle as a movie. I wonder how much will be chopped and how much the story will suffer from the transition to celluloid. However, as the eternal cycnical optimist that I am, I’ll expect it to be terrible while harbouring some deep seated hope that it’ll rock.

For those of you interested, here are a bunch of posters for the movie from the latest Comic-Con, showing the main players. The look of the whole thing is certainly pretty faithful to the book.

And on the subject of comic books being made into movies, here’s some more on the recent Batman movie, The Dark Knight. In this article, John Scalzi discusses whether or not The Dark Knight really is an Oscar worthy film. It would certainly do wonders for the whole spec fic genre if the film did pull in one or two small golden humanoids. Fingers crossed.

Things are slowly becoming normal again. We’ve moved into our new place and, while we’re still surrounded by boxes and still have a whole bunch of things to do, we’re kind of settling down. Most importantly I’ve managed to get our internet connection sorted out. Thank the gods of complicated communication processes for that one.

Actually, it wasn’t that complicated, so I should be grateful. It was just a bit time consuming. But being without the internet at home for two weeks was awful. I felt like I was adrift in a tiny dinghy on a vast sea, with no land in sight and only one wormy biscuit for sustenance. Well, perhaps that’s exaggerating mildly, but you get the idea. I’m an internetian; I consider the net as much my home as my house. And for two weeks I couldn’t find my keys. But it’s all good now.

Anyway, given all the hectic activity that caused me to miss posting an episode of ‘Verse last week, I’m going to try to make it up to you all now and post two episodes today.

So, head on over to the Serial Novella page and you’ll find episodes 27 and 28 waiting for you. Talking of things getting hectic, at least my situation is nothing like Ghost’s.

I know, I’m a bad man. I’ve just moved house and was determined to keep up to date on ‘Verse even if nothing much else happened online while we got settled. However, that hasn’t happened. I’m still trying to sort out an internet connection at our new house and am currently in a net cafe. Dire, I know.

So, things may still be disrupted for a little while yet, but I’ll make it up to you. Once I get the chance, I’ll post at least two episodes of VFoS to make up for missing this week.

Just a quick update to the previous post. You can now find A ‘Verse Full of Scum at the Web Fiction Guide website. Here’s a direct link.

Have a look and if you’d like to leave a review and/or a rating, that would be just dandy. Consider it your good deed of the day. Leaving a rating only takes a couple of seconds.

While you’re there check out some of the other stuff on the site. There’s some good fiction on there.

EDIT – As per a comment below from Chris Poirier, at Web Fiction Guide:

Hi Alan — As another hint for your readers, recommending stuff they like also helps our listings at webfictionguide.com get better. It’s just a one-click thing, but if they do that with all the stories they like, it will help readers with similar tastes find stuff they’ll like, too.

In very sad news for the blooking and online serial community, the Pages Unbound website may be closing down. For those that don’t know, PU is one of the best online portals to find free fiction and serials – my own serial, A ‘Verse Full of Scum, is on there and quite well rated. I get a decent amount of traffic from the site and I spend a fair amount of time there myself, checking out the competition. I mean, enjoying the work of my fellow writers.

In the article linked above there is talk of the Web Fiction Guide website. I’ve had a look there and it’s a great site. I’ve submitted VFoS for inclusion there, so I’ll let you know if they accept it.

It’ll be very sad if Pages Unbound does go under, so here’s hoping someone takes it on.